The devil of Croyden Hill: kinship, fiction, fact, tradition

Folklore, April, 2005 by John B. Smith

We all remember the terrible exclamation of the dying profligate, when a friend, to destroy what he supposed the hypochondriac idea of a spectre appearing in a certain shape at a given hour, placed before him a person dressed up in the manner he described. "Mon Dieu!" said the expiring sinner ..., "il yen a deux!" (Scott n.d., chap. 22, 177).

The aim of this essay is to bring together a number of scattered West Country traditions that appear to have much in common. [1] Each makes perfect sense when seen in isolation, but will nevertheless benefit from being viewed alongside its analogues, since detailed comparisons will then become possible. Family relationships will for instance become apparent, as will incompatibilities and inconsistencies. For the purposes just outlined, it will be best for us to allocate a bracketed upper-case letter of the alphabet to each "type," together with a distinguishing number for each of the stories apparently belonging to it. Such numbers have no precise chronological or genealogical significance. For instance, a variant given the number 6 must not necessarily be seen as younger than or as a direct descendant of one numbered 5.

We begin with a story, (A1), once told by the Revd Hawker of Morwenstow in north-east Cornwall. This was about the clerk of that parish, whose wife used to wash the parson's surplices. Taken to task by his wife for a prolonged visit at the village inn, the clerk threatened in dudgeon to return to his potations, and did indeed set out again with this in mind. Meanwhile, donning one of the parson's surplices to disguise herself as a ghost, the wife took a short cut and confronted her husband on his way. Terrified, he turned back. Making use of her short cut again, the wife got home first, and was calmly ironing another surplice when her chastened husband arrived (Ditchfield 1907, 237).

What is in effect the same story, here identified as (A2), was known in the Blackdowns of the Somerset-Devon borderland. A wife in despair about her husband's drinking habits eventually decides to play on his superstitious nature, pulls a white nightgown over her dress, and goes to hide in a hedge by a crossroad where he is to pass on his way home one night. Groaning, and with arms waving, she confronts him. Once he has gathered himself a little, he solemnly intones: "Avoid thee, Satan. I be a ringer and a zinger, and a bass-viol player up to (Woodycombe) Church theaze last forty year. Avoid thee, Satan!" [2] The "ghost" then swiftly returns home by a short cut, and is calmly sewing by the fire when joined by her husband, now destined to be "a sober, stay-at-home man" for the rest of his life (Mathews 1923, 74-5).

Another story from Cornwall, (B1), thematically if not genetically related to the ones from Morwenstow and the Blackdowns, is known as "The White Bucca and the Black." Here, an old lady of Raftra in St Levan has a prank similar to those in (A1) and (A2) played upon her, but she is not taken in. Her stepdaughter, wishing to stop the old lady's gallivantings, persuades a serving-man to dress in a white sheet and intercept her on her way home one dark night. Undaunted by the apparition, she greets him with the words: "Hullo! Bucca-gwidden ['white spirit'], what ... dost thee do here, with Bucca-dhu ['black spirit'] so close behind thee?" The white "spirit" is terrified at the thought of the black one behind him, runs off as fast as his legs will carry him, falls into a fit, and is never again right in the head (Briggs 1970-71, part B. vol. 1, 38).

This tale does not stand alone. Compare for instance (B2), a Dorset variant known as "The Netherbury Churchyard Legend," which appears in Udal's Dorsetshire Folk-Lore of 1922. In it, the old parish clerk and sexton of Netherbury, repeatedly disturbed by a half-witted girl singing psalms outside his house at night, wraps himself in a sheet and rises up before her in the church porch. Far from nonplussed, she asks him whose soul he is. She then exclaims: "Souls be about tonight! For there's a black 'un too and he's trying to come up to the whir' un." Wild with fear at this, the sexton takes to his heels. Glancing back, he does indeed fancy he sees a dark figure behind him, which, Udal tells us, "was probably that of his own shadow in the moonlight." The sexton's tribulations continue once he is within his own four walls, since he is then affected by a serious illness that causes him to "peel" from head to foot. Like her Cornish counterpart, the idiot girl is no longer molested (Udal, 1970, 168-69; Briggs 1970-71, part B, vol. 2, 276; Westwood 1987, 72-3). [3]

One of the interesting things about (B1) and (B2) is that we are left poised between a supernatural and a natural explanation. Is the Bucca-dhu alias black soul really a spirit, or is it the victim's own shadow? As we have seen, Udal is keen for us to embrace the latter explanation, although the actual text of his narrative leaves the matter unresolved. In another Dorset variant, (B3), "Varmer Brickell and the Ghost," in which the said farmer is the only main character, and a drunken one at that, naturalism has unequivocally gained the upper hand, and it is made quite clear that what he takes to be a "divil-ghost" is indeed his own shadow (Knott 1976, 122-4). Such late versions of the story are jocular tales, but there can be little doubt that some of their earlier predecessors were true legends. In these, the black ghost that pursues the white "ghost" is not his shadow, but an avenging spirit, bent on punishing a mortal who pretends to supernatural powers. Moreover, the intended victim, who first espies the black ghost and thus turns the tables on his or her tormentor, is often portrayed as a "simple" person, whose handicap is offset by the ability to see and commune with such spirits.